Threads and Traces: True False Fictive

by Carlo Ginzburg, Anne C. Tedeschi (Translator)

Overview

Carlo Ginzburg’s brilliant and timely new essay collection takes a bold stand against naive positivism and allegedly sophisticated neo-skepticism. It looks deeply into questions raised by decades of post-structuralism: What constitutes historical truth? How do we draw a boundary between truth and fiction? What is the relationship between history and memory? How do we grapple with the historical conventions that inform, in different ways, all written documents? In his answers, Ginzburg peels away layers of subsequent readings and interpretations that envelop every text to make a larger argument about history and fiction. Interwoven with compelling autobiographical references, Threads and Traces bears moving witness to Ginzburg’s life as a European Jew, the abiding strength of his scholarship, and his deep engagement with the historian’s craft.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520274488
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	01/09/2012
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.18(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Carlo Ginzburg is retired from Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (Italy). He is the author of numerous books that have been translated into English including The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Introduction

1. Description and Citation
2. The Conversion of the Jews of Minorca (A.D. 417–418)
3. Montaigne, Cannibals, and Grottoes
4. Proofs and Possibilities:
Postscript to Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre
5. Paris, 1647: A Dialogue on Fiction and History
6. The Europeans Discover (or Rediscover) the Shamans
7. Tolerance and Commerce: Auerbach Reads Voltaire
8. Anacharsis Interrogates the Natives:
A New Reading of an Old Best Seller
9. Following the Tracks of Israël Bertuccio
10. The Bitter Truth: Stendhal’s Challenge to Historians
11. Representing the Enemy:
On the French Prehistory of the Protocols
12. Just One Witness:
The Extermination of the Jews and the Principle of Reality
13. Details, Early Plans, Microanalysis:
Thoughts on a Book by Siegfried Kracauer
14. Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It
15. Witches and Shamans

Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"No other living historian approaches the range of [Ginzburg's] erudition. Every page of Threads and Traces, his latest work to appear in English, offers an illustration of it."—London Review of Books

"Ginzburg's range is remarkable . . . rich in references to and insights about diverse historical perspectives."—Publishers Weekly

"A collection of essays by the profoundly original, intellectually wide-ranging, Italian-Jewish historian Carlo Ginzburg . . . an illuminating collection of chapters, deftly translated from the original Italian by Anne C. and John Tedeschi."—Forward

"These essays humanely and generously explore the question of how history ought to be written."—The Literary Review

"Surprising pace, intellectual range, and learned discourse is typical throughout the book. . . . Artfully constructed essays."—Jrnl of
Interdisciplinary History

Editorial Reviews

Surprising pace, intellectual range, and learned discourse is typical throughout the book. . . . Artfully constructed essays.

Jrnl Of Interdisciplinary History - Raymond Grew

This is a brilliant text, the product of a scholar of rare breadth and knowledge.

Melbourne Historical Jrnl - Ben McDonald

No other living historian approaches the range of [Ginzburg’s] erudition. Every page of Threads and Traces, his latest work to appear in English, offers an illustration of it.

London Review Of Books - Perry Anderson

A collection of essays by the profoundly original, intellectually wide-ranging, Italian-Jewish historian Carlo Ginzburg . . . an illuminating collection of chapters, deftly translated from the original Italian by Anne C. and John Tedeschi.

Forward - Benjamin Ivry

These essays humanely and generously explore the question of how history ought to be written.

The Literary Review - Jonathan Beckman

Included here are 15 essays by perhaps Italy’s most renowned historian, a professor emeritus at Pisa’s Scuola Normale Superiore. Ginzburg’s (The Cheese and the Worm) range is remarkable, from “The Conversion of the Jews of Minorca (A.D. 417–418),” to “Paris 1647: A Dialogue of Fiction and History.” While he seems influenced by the French Annales school’s emphasis on “mentalities,” the intellectual, cultural, and social currents that influence events, his interest here is on historiography. One of Ginzburg’s most original and accessible essays is on microhistory, the study of, for instance, one rural village (such as Natalie Zemon-Davis’s The Return of Martin Guerre), that his own work has sometimes exemplified. This is a demanding book, assuming knowledge of much pre-modern and modern philosophy, literature, and historical writing. For example, in his essay “The Extermination of the Jews and the Principle of Reality,” a discussion of the French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s refutation of the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, soon segues into a discussion of Italian historians Giovanni Gentile’s and Benedetto Croce’s “metaphysical theory of history.” This is definitely not a work for the general reader. But for the specialist, it is rich in references to and insights about diverse historical perspectives. 10 b&w photos. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly